Say Goodbye to DVD Tuesday, 13 April 2010 00:27 Written by Alegna

Living in China is like living Captain Jack Sparrow’s life. What, with all the pirated stuff, from “Lolex” watches to Gucci and LV handbags, China is a paradise of fake goods. The most popular pirated products that residents, both locals and foreigns, patronize is probably DVD movies. They are available at almost every street corner, with prices ranging from RMB 5 to RMB 10 ($ 0.75 to $ 1.5). Way cheap! Those with [better] quality and from legal-looking shops cost about twice as much. Still cheap for owning a copy when renting a movie normally costs the same.

Being a communications graduate with a minor in film, I know that pirating really hurts the business (but I won’t go into that politics), but I, too, being a movie buff, have succumbed into patronizing the illegal stuff. I bought loads of DVDs, and while some were my favorites, others were plain movies to watch to pass time.
One day I noticed that I was buying more at a single time. Although they are cheap, the cost eventually adds up. If I buy five DVDs for RMB 5 each every other day (I could watch at least two every night), that translates into RMB 375 a month (or a nice dinner at one of the plush restaurants in town). Say, I buy the RMB 10 DVDs, that equals to RMB 750 every month. That’s over $1,200 a year that I could’ve just saved for my Eurotrip!

Actually, I didn’t think of it that way exactly, but I did think about the money I was spending on fake DVDs. I thought I was saving because they are damn cheap, but I kept buying that I ended up spending more than I would have had. That’s when I started researching about online movie streaming, and for two years now, I have only bought less than a dozen of fake DVDs.

I would like to share with you the best sources I found online. I use these pretty often. Mind you that I am not talking about torrents or other web resource for downloading movies. I am talking about FREE online streaming.

For movies, I always go to free movie links. It does not host the videos, but is like a library with links to the actual videos. Some links are with very good video quality. There are ratings, too, that you can take as a guide whether a link is good or bad. I usually opt for those that are in DivX as they tend to be more reliable, and of better quality (if you don’t have a DivX player, you can easily download it for free).

For TV series, I use different channels. My first choices are the Chinese ones since there is a tendency that a foreign video host may not load. I find tuduo and youku quite handy. Their interfaces are in Chinese, but it’s not a problem even if you don’t read Chinese. You can easily identify which is the search box. They are rather user-friendly. You can type in the English titles when you search. You can also find the Chinese equivalent and copy-paste it on the search box to up your chances of getting better results.

Another favorite resource is OVGuide. Some links may not work here in China, but if you have a VPN or proxy, that shouldn’t be a problem and you’d find this place truly a movie paradise. Another website worthy of note is Surf the Channel, but like OVGuide, some links are blocked sites in China, thanks to the Great Firewall.

As for buffering speed, it depends on your Internet connection. Your ISP may also have a bearing on the connection speed. My 2MB China Unicom connection is quite fast. I never had to wait for more than a few minutes. Some links like Novamov and Movshare seem to load faster than most, while I found XTshare rather slow (slowest that I almost don’t watch from there, especially when there are other options).

I highly recommend these websites for all viewing purposes. Of course, some want to watch movies on a bigger screen than their laptop or desktop computers’, but if you don’t mind the smaller screen, try these sites. You might even save yourself an extra grand or more a year (if you don’t need that extra savings, you can donate it to my Eurotrip LOL).

Comments 

 

#1 New Link to Movies Online — aLeGnaRoMa 2010-05-08 15:17

I forgot to mention that "Watch Movies Online For Free" changes its URL from time to time. The new address is www.movies-links.tv/

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